Whether as slaves or freedmen, the political and social status of African Americans has always been tied to their ability to participate in the nation's economy. Freedom in the post--Civil War years did not guarantee equality, and African Americans from emancipation to the present have faced the seemingly insurmountable task of erasing pervasive public belief in the inferiority of their race.

For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 describes the African American struggle to obtain equal rights in the workplace and organized labor's response to their demands. Award-winning historian Robert H. Zieger asserts that the promise of jobs was similar to the forty-acres-and-a-mule restitution pledged to African Americans during the Reconstruction era. The inconsistencies between rhetoric and action encouraged workers, both men and women, to organize themselves into unions to fight against unfair hiring practices and workplace discrimination.

Though the path proved difficult, unions gradually obtained rights for African American workers with prominent leaders at their fore. In 1925, A. Philip Randolph formed the first black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to fight against injustices committed by the Pullman Company, an employer of significant numbers of African Americans. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) emerged in 1935, and its population quickly swelled to include over 500,000 African American workers. The most dramatic success came in the 1960s with the establishment of affirmative action programs, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title VII enforcement measures prohibiting employer discrimination based on race.

Though racism and unfair hiring practices still exist today, motivated individuals and leaders of the labor movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries laid the groundwork for better conditions and greater opportunities. Unions, with some sixteen million members currently in their ranks, continue to protect workers against discrimination in the expanding economy. For Jobs and Freedom is the first authoritative treatment in more than two decades of the race and labor movement, and Zieger's comprehensive and authoritative book will be standard reading on the subject for years to come.

China's rapid socio-economic development has achieved remarkable equalizing conditions between men and women in the aspects of health, education and labor force participation, but the glass ceiling phenomenon has become more prominent. The book develops a cross-disciplinary paradigm, with economics at its core, to better understand gender in China and women in management in the Chinese business context. The theoretical perspective integrates the knowledge and evidence from cognate disciplinary strands, such as economics, sociology, management studies, and the Chinese literature, into one unified framework. In-depth interviews with managers in China's largest enterprises complement the theoretical perspective with rich empirical details to examine women's managerial experiences and career choices. The book's argument sheds light on the power of stereotypes that specify women's roles in the family, organization, and society. It shows that understanding the socio-psychological and organizational dynamics of stereotyping in the Chinese context, as well as how Chinese women make career decisions, recognizing and deploying these expectations, provides new perspectives on the underrepresentation of women among business leaders in China. The book offers multi-disciplinary evidence on the economics of gender in China that is highly relevant for gender studies in general, and across a number of subject areas, and it can be used in any setting as an introductory reference. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Kirsten Sehnbruch uses the case study of Chile to show the failures and inner-working of neo-liberal labour policy. She shows in detail what the real policy issue should be, namely the creation of proper institutions and of a corps of competent professionals with relevant skills and powers to operate them. This is extremely timely work, in that institutions are a matter of enormous concern in the international development community of policy-makers, who are desperate to make current orthodoxy work in terms of sustainability, the quality of life, human development and other dimensions beyond GDP growth.

This volume examines the source of ideas in active labor market policies in the US, France, Denmark, UK and at European Union level. What are the most likely trajectories of active labour market policies in different national settings? Will welfare reform become more punitive towards welfare recipients, thus implying that the EU will just pay lip service to the commitment to social justice that is at the core of the European social model?

Labour markets are differentiated by occupation and types of training, and these submarkets are seldom in equilibrium. This disequilibrium -- shortages and surpluses in labour markets -- is often attributed to a lack of flexibility in wage structures, the limited possibility for substitution between submarkets, and the high adjustment costs. In addition, market changes are difficult to foresee, thus making it equally difficult to respond appropriately. This book contains the results of research from three major European institutes -- the Research Centre for Education and the Labor Market (ROA) at the University of Limburg in the Netherlands, the Institute for Employment Research (IER) at the University of Warwick in the U.K., and Institut fA1/4r Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) at the Bundesanstalt fA1/4r Arbeit in Germany -- looking at how each institute conducts labour market forecasts by education and type of training. The common element of these institutes is their use of the manpower requirements method. The book is grouped into three parts -- Models and Methods, Forecasts, and Reflections -- with each institute presenting its results in each section.

This book deals with the role host countries' institutional characteristics play in the labour market integration of immigrants in the European Union. Drawing on existing research it develops a comprehensive conceptual framework of factors (and underlying mechanisms) affecting immigrant structural integration in the European Union-15. It maps the European countries with respect to three institutional aspects central to immigrant integration, immigration policies, labour market structure and welfare regimes. Further, it presents a descriptive picture of the labour market situation of the immigrant population in the European Union and seeks to explain the variation in labour market outcomes, namely unemployment risk and occupational status, with reference to differences in the characteristics of the immigrant populations on the one hand, and by differences in labour market structure, immigration policies and welfare regimes in European Union countries, on the other.

Empirical and mathematically rigorous, this book provides a study of the economics of prostitution rather than focusing on the sociological and cultural themes. Using economic tools of analysis, internationally based editors have put together a theoretically informed volume that explores the supply and demand of prostitution.

Prostitution is a globalized industry involving millions of workers and it is characterized by a high degree of inequality in working conditions (ranging from slavery to self-managed and legalized unionized employment), by different sub-markets and fully integrated in the productive system.

Taking a provocative approach to prostitution, this book is a must read for students and researchers in the area of gender and economics.

This book analyzes the everyday lives of labour migrants in a rapidly developing city-state. Using the emirate of Dubai as a case study, Migrant Dubai shows that even within highly restrictive mobility regimes, marginalized migrants find ways to cope with structural inequalities and quotidian modes of discrimination.

Trade unions have experienced considerable global decline since the late 1970s. Although union influence remains significant in most nations, many unions have witnessed a fall in membership, on which this influence ultimately depends. Past attempts at turning the fortunes of unions around in the face of 'globalisation' and national predicaments have been the concern of union leaderships. In the case of Nigeria, such events are economic circumstances, the use of legal instrumentality such as decrees and edicts, and lack of democratic environment due to constant military intervention in Nigeria's political system.In light of the current global developments, especially in relation to density decline of trade union membership and the role trade unions are expected to play in industrial relations, The Impact of Political Action on Labour Movement Strength explores the consequences of government action and the economic and political policies on union membership and clout. This book investigates the forms of political action undertaken by trade unions and reviews the conditions under which these actions succeed or fail, whilst exploring how trade unions balance this function in relation to their main aim of collective bargaining.

This book examines theories of firm-level human capital investment with respect to topics in labor demand, macroeconomics (especially connected to unemployment), and firm-union bargaining. It covers a wide range of related policy issues, including the worksharing versus layoff debate, wage-tenure profiles, taxation and the choice between pure wages and profit sharing compensation, and the role of specific investment in the Japanese firm versus the traditional (United States) neoclassical firm.

The rapid growth of offshore outsourcing in manufacturing and IT-based services is unleashing dramatic changes around the world. This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners to analyze the implications of this huge transformation. For some observers, offshore outsourcing promises more rapid economic growth for both developed and developing countries. For others, it unravels the social contract in today's rich countries, as labor and governments lose bargaining power vis-a-vis globally mobile capital. For yet others, it offers some developing countries the opportunity to leapfrog, while pushing others even further to the sidelines. This book provides a uniquely comprehensive, yet diverse account of the winners and losers from offshore outsourcing and of how policy might be used to spread its benefits more widely and equally.

This authoritative book, bringing together the reports of the Competitiveness Advisory Group, identifies actions to improve European competitiveness politically, economically and socially. The objective is to raise living standards and maintain social cohesion. The Competitiveness Advisory Group has the mission of advising the European Commission and the Heads of State and Government of the European Union. The members of this independent group, which includes leading industrialists, trade unionists, politicians and academics, have adopted a 'bottom-up' approach, seeking to draw lessons from the experience of countries, industries and firms: they rely on 'benchmarking' in order to identify best practice. In the context of increasing interdependence of world trade and consequent globalization of the international economy new policy prescriptions are required for growth and employment, greater efficiency and higher standards of living. In relation to this, the Group discusses the need to close the worldwide technology gap, for Europe to develop deeper relations with the fast growing Asia Pacific region and argues for greater European solidarity in international trade negotiations. Within the European Union itself, it emphasizes the need to achieve the internal market for the free flow of goods, services and people. In addition, it stresses that Europe needs to catch-up, construct and eventually lead the development of the information society in which workers are recognized as a major asset to be invested in. The Group concludes that, although unemployment remains high, European competitiveness now has a brighter future with the movement towards economic and monetary union, and the enlargement of the European Union eastwards. This book will be essential reading for policymakers, government advisers, industrialists and academics concerned with the future of European economies and societies.

Creative Labour Regulation is an interdisciplinary response to the central contemporary challenges to effective labour regulation. Drawing on contributions by leading experts from the Regulating for Decent Work Network, it offers new ideas for research and policy.The book identifies three central challenges to contemporary labour regulation: intensifying labour market fragmentation; complex interactions between labour market institutions; and obstacles to effective enforcement. International in scope, the volume includes chapters on both advanced economies (Europe and the United States) and the developing world (Argentina, Cambodia, South Africa and Viet Nam).Topics addressed include the regulation of precarious and informal work, the role of minimum wage regulation in industrialized and low-income countries, the promise and limitations of 'hybrid' public-private enforcement mechanisms - including in the International Labour Organization/International Finance Corporation's Better Work programme - and the involvement of labour inspectorates and civil society organizations in implementing labour standards.Creative Labour Regulation acknowledges the complexity of ensuring labour protection in contemporary economies. It concludes, however, that innovation in devising more effective legal regulation is possible, in both the advanced industrialized world and in low-income countries.

This significant book explains how work-life balance is being destroyed because individuals fail to link their work effort with its adverse environmental effects and the personal costs they impose. The burgeoning literature dealing with work-life balance suggests that the developed world is more interested in this issue today than at any other time in the recent past. Provocative and insightful, Work, Leisure and the Environment presents a rigorous explanation based on economic theory as to why contemporary societies suffer from over-work and work-life imbalance, asserting that they are both the cause and effect of environmental degradation. The author focuses upon a fundamental flaw in contemporary market economies that causes individuals to unknowingly reduce their well-being by working and consuming excessively, while enjoying inadequate leisure time. It is argued that this inability to correctly assess the benefits derived from their work effort causes individuals to place unreasonable and unsustainable demands on the environment. By ignoring the environmental destruction that accompanies work effort, its benefits are overestimated and, as a consequence, individuals voluntarily choose to work longer hours than they should. This engaging volume will have widespread appeal amongst researchers and policymakers interested in the environment, consumerism and labour markets and will also be an invaluable reference tool for studies into leisure and work-life balance.

The vision of a 'new' international division of labour, involving relocation of 'traditional' industrial activities to the Third World and specialisation in 'high-technology' industries by developed countries is an attractive one. But critics respond that this vision conceals the reality of heightened exploitation in the former and industrial and geographic decline in the latter. However, critical approaches are sometimes vitiated by economistic, functionalist and determinist arguments. Because of the potential they offer to overcome these conceptual dilemmas, French regulation theories have attracted attention among scholars from diverse disciplines. This book assesses the implications of French regulation theories for our understanding of the concept of the international division of labour. It distinguishes the Parisian approach, represented by Michel Aglietta and Alain Lipietz, from the Grenoble school. It is based on a thorough study of the French literature and on interviews with the major theorists. For English-language readers, the book offers an excellent introduction to Francophone debates in international political economy.

This book is concerned with the ways in which the problem of security is thought about and promoted by a range of actors and agencies in the public, private and nongovernmental sectors. The authors are concerned not simply with the influence of risk-based thinking in the area of security, but seek rather to map the mentalities and practices of security found in a variety of sectors, and to understand the ways in which thinking from these sectors influence one another. Their particular concern is to understand the drivers of innovation in the governance of security, the conditions that make innovation possible and the ways in which innovation is imagined and realised by actors from a wide range of sectors. The book has two key themes: first, governance is now no longer simply shaped by thinking within the state sphere, for thinking originating within the business and community spheres now also shapes governance, and influence one another. Secondly, these developments have implications for the future of democratic values as assumptions about the traditional role of government are increasingly challenged. The first five chapters of the book explore what has happened to the governance of security, through an analysis of the drivers, conditions and processes of innovation in the context of particular empirical developments. Particular reference is made here to 'waves of change' in security within the Ontario Provincial Police in Canada. In the final chapter the authors examine the implications of 'nodal governance' for democratic values, and then suggest normative directions for deepening democracy in these new circumstances.

High unemployment rates in the period of an internationalization of economies and an intensified technological competition are the main problems that exist in most EU countries. Taking stock of unemployment patterns, technological trends and employment opportunities in the EU and the US is crucial for the reform debate in Europe. In continental Europe, major problems are an insufficient creation of new firms in innovative technology fields, inadequate labor market developments and inconsistent R&D policies. Founded on new data evaluations, the book presents an innovative analysis of these topics and shows opportunities for reforms.

This volume contains empirical analyses of European psychologists and sociologists on the impact of job insecurity on trade union membership, activism and upon the attitudes of individual workers towards unions. Little is currently known about the impact of job insecurity on the union participation of workers, which is significant given the importance of trade unions in European collective bargaining systems. This volume reports innovative and pioneering research on this research gap. It answers questions such as: do workers more easily join unions because of job insecurity, or does it make them leave the union? Does it influence participation in work's council elections or affect the intention to become a union activist? And are workers less satisfied and less committed to their unions when they experience job insecurity? The book contains recommendations for policy makers, social partners and practitioners in the field of work and organizations.

Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn't. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

In economics, the voluntary sector is surprisingly understudied. In order to fully understand economics, unpaid and voluntary work needs to be taken into account and afforded the same status as paid activities. This book constitutes a rigorous economic analysis with special emphasis on gender issues and covers every conceivable angle of unpaid work and all its ramifications for the modern economy. The unified vision offered by this group of leading contributors ensures this book is a work of excellent quality. There is every chance it will become a seminal study on unpaid work and as such will provide a useful reference for students and academics involved in gender studies, econometrics, and consumption studies.

This book asks anew whether there really was European integration before 1914. By focussing on quantitative (economic indicators) and qualitative data (the international regulation of patents, communication networks, social policy and plant protection), the authors re-evaluate European integration of the time and address the politics of seemingly apolitical cooperation. The authors show that European integration was multifaceted and cooperation less the result of intent, than of incentives. National polities and international regimes co-shaped each other. The result is a book that achieves two things: offer stand-alone chapters that shed light on specific developments and - these read altogether - develop a bigger picture. It will be of interest to researchers and students of economic history, as well as those interested in the history of internationalism and globalisation.

Search Theory and Unemployment contains nine chapters that survey and extend the theory of job search and its application to the problem of unemployment. The volume ranges from surveys of job search theory that take microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives to original theoretical contributions which focus on the externalities arising from non-sequential search and search under imperfect information. It includes a clear and authoritative survey of econometric methods that have been developed to estimate models of job search, as well as two lucid contributions to the empirical search literature. Finally, it includes a study that reviews and extends the literature on optimal unemployment insurance and concludes with an appraisal of the influence of search theory on the thinking of macroeconomic policymakers.

This volume is a collection of selected papers using the framework of inframarginal analysis of the division of labour held at Monash University on 6-7 July 2001. This framework, pioneered mainly by Professor Xiaokai Yang, (with joint researches involving all the three editors and many of the authors), has been recommended by Professor James Buchanan (Nobel Laureate in Economics) as the most important analysis in economics in the world today.